Studies, theories, ideas, notes from the workface and occasional bits of stupidity.

Wednesday, 2 July 2008

My eyes are feeling a bit fried up from reading for the past three hours, and I'm about to call it a day - well, at least for the time being: I'll probably do some more work this evening at some stage. A question about methodologies: why are they all aimed at beginners? OK, so lots of research has been done about acquisition and learning, but what about the fine-tuning, improving and expanding phase, once students get past intermediate level? I don't know if much research has been done, but my impressions based on my teaching experiences are that there's a big drop-off in the numbers of students who want to learn English once they get to an intermediate level, or thereabouts - in other words, once they reach a basic level of linguistic competency. Now, the fact that tens of thousands of people take the FCE and CAE, and that the number of students taking IELTS has exploded over the past year, may belie that fact, but there it is. What turns basic competency into fluency and eventually mastery? What are the motivators?